Contact centers may receive and/or originate communications with remote parties for various reasons. In some instances these communications may involve emails, web-chats, texts, or other forms of character-based digital communications. In order for an agent to act on the content of such messages, the messages must be digitally processed and displayed to the agent, which inherently includes storage of the digital content in computer-readable form. The communication content may be stored as text strings, files, etc. The content can be received, stored, and then displayed to agents at subsequent times when needed. The inherent storage of such communications makes it easy to subsequently review the subject matter to confirm or verify the exchange of information that occurred.
When communication involves voice calls, the calls may be processed in real time without any long-term storage of the content. Verification of the original conversation is difficult unless the voice call was recorded. Thus, it is often desirable to record voice conversations in a contact center to allow verification of the subject matter and to confirm that the agent involved followed various internal policies.
The technology used to record voice calls is readily available, inexpensive, and flexible. What is more complex is interpreting the various state and federal statutes governing when calls may be legally recorded. These statutes define various conditions before voice recording is allowed. Generally speaking, if all parties on the call provide consent, then recording is allowable. However, there are exceptions for various conditions when recording can occur without express consent and these may depend in part on the state where the call is originating and/or terminating.
Some state laws allow voice calls to be recorded if only one party provides consent. These are called “single-party consent” states. Other state laws allow calls to be recorded only if all parties have provided consent. These are called “dual-party consent” or “multi-party consent” states. For intra-state calls, the law of the applicable state can be applied, but for inter-state calls, it is not always clear which one of a particular state's rules govern the recording of the voice call, if at all.
Determining for a given call whether it can be legally recorded is difficult, and the laws have not always kept pace with recent technologies. For example, in the past, calls made to a landline based telephone number allowed easy determination as to what state the call was directed to. However, with telephone number portability, knowing the telephone number does not necessarily indicate what state the number is based in. Similarly, if the called number is a wireless number, the number itself may not necessarily represent which state the called party is located in. Thus, improved approaches are needed for recording voice calls in various contexts. It is with respect to these considerations and others that the disclosure herein is presented.